Stanley Tucci did a fine job portraying an actor named David Ruskin in this episode. Ruskin is shadowing Monk & Co. as they investigate a real life homicide, preparing to portray Monk in a TV movie about a case this series had last year when Monk figured out how an astronaut killed someone while he was actually in space.
There were two crimes being investigated by our heroes. We began with a man and a woman apparently about to have a one-night stand but due to some playfulness a teddy bear was knocked off the shelf and the man saw there was a video camera inside. He thus knew she was picking up married men in bars, having some fun with them, and blackmailing them with the video evidence of their fling. He tried to get the camera away from her and they got to shoving each other until she accidentally lurched into something and fell to the ground, dead.
After seeing the gang at the scene investigating and meeting the famous actor who worked hard to say one of Monk's favorite phrases exactly like Monk, we then saw a sledge hammer breaking down a wall and that same man who was with the woman breaking into a pawn shop where he was interrupted by the store owner, brandishing a gun. All the bad guy wanted to do then was leave, but the man wouldn't let him. They struggled, the gun went off and the man looked horrified that this man had died.
Trying not to give away too much, I'll say that the burglary at the pawn shop was done strictly to destroy some evidence that the man and woman were together briefly in public, before she took him home and wound up dead. What he was trying to cover up quite likely would have never been discovered. But the bigger issue is that he was seen in public with the woman and there existed plenty of chance for several people to have noticed them together that night, so it just didn't make any sense for him to smash down a wall and steal from the pawn shop just to destroy the one other thing that could possibly have linked them together. Because neither death had been planned, or even intended in any way, there were all sorts of clues that linked the two killings and helped Monk figure out what happened.
A large portion of this episode dealt with the actor, Ruskin, who was known to get so involved in his prior roles that he had serious psychological issues. We quickly see that he is becoming so obsessed with "being" Monk that he begins to believe he is Monk and that Trudy was his wife. He misunderstands a message someone tried to give to the real Monk and winds up almost killing a car dealer (the man responsible for the two deaths in tonight's episode) in revenge for him killing Trudy, and gets into a ridiculous fight with Adrian.
While the first appearances of Ruskin were rather funny, once we learned about his prior problems, all the scenes with him were quite disturbing. He was in need of real help as he had lost touch with reality. None of those scenes was funny and they went on way too long in a couple of cases. There was even a really sad scene at the end with Monk and Dr. Kroger, as Adrian had regressed and instead of cutting his visits from 3 per week to 2 as planned, he was now demanding the doctor see him all 7 days of the week. But they didn't do it like I stated, they slowly added a third visit, then a fourth, then a fifth, then ...It was too dragged out and not funny in the least.
I earlier rated this a 6 but on further review think I was too generous. Too many of the things supposed to be funny weren't and there was no cleverness to either crime committed because neither one was planned at all. It was cool to see the "actor" becoming like Monk initially, but where it led just wasn't funny, so I give this a 5.
There were two crimes being investigated by our heroes. We began with a man and a woman apparently about to have a one-night stand but due to some playfulness a teddy bear was knocked off the shelf and the man saw there was a video camera inside. He thus knew she was picking up married men in bars, having some fun with them, and blackmailing them with the video evidence of their fling. He tried to get the camera away from her and they got to shoving each other until she accidentally lurched into something and fell to the ground, dead.
After seeing the gang at the scene investigating and meeting the famous actor who worked hard to say one of Monk's favorite phrases exactly like Monk, we then saw a sledge hammer breaking down a wall and that same man who was with the woman breaking into a pawn shop where he was interrupted by the store owner, brandishing a gun. All the bad guy wanted to do then was leave, but the man wouldn't let him. They struggled, the gun went off and the man looked horrified that this man had died.
Trying not to give away too much, I'll say that the burglary at the pawn shop was done strictly to destroy some evidence that the man and woman were together briefly in public, before she took him home and wound up dead. What he was trying to cover up quite likely would have never been discovered. But the bigger issue is that he was seen in public with the woman and there existed plenty of chance for several people to have noticed them together that night, so it just didn't make any sense for him to smash down a wall and steal from the pawn shop just to destroy the one other thing that could possibly have linked them together. Because neither death had been planned, or even intended in any way, there were all sorts of clues that linked the two killings and helped Monk figure out what happened.
A large portion of this episode dealt with the actor, Ruskin, who was known to get so involved in his prior roles that he had serious psychological issues. We quickly see that he is becoming so obsessed with "being" Monk that he begins to believe he is Monk and that Trudy was his wife. He misunderstands a message someone tried to give to the real Monk and winds up almost killing a car dealer (the man responsible for the two deaths in tonight's episode) in revenge for him killing Trudy, and gets into a ridiculous fight with Adrian.
While the first appearances of Ruskin were rather funny, once we learned about his prior problems, all the scenes with him were quite disturbing. He was in need of real help as he had lost touch with reality. None of those scenes was funny and they went on way too long in a couple of cases. There was even a really sad scene at the end with Monk and Dr. Kroger, as Adrian had regressed and instead of cutting his visits from 3 per week to 2 as planned, he was now demanding the doctor see him all 7 days of the week. But they didn't do it like I stated, they slowly added a third visit, then a fourth, then a fifth, then ...It was too dragged out and not funny in the least.
I earlier rated this a 6 but on further review think I was too generous. Too many of the things supposed to be funny weren't and there was no cleverness to either crime committed because neither one was planned at all. It was cool to see the "actor" becoming like Monk initially, but where it led just wasn't funny, so I give this a 5.